


Team Players

by Phylwannabe



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Drunkenness, F/M, Infertility, Pregnancy, Unhappy couple; Marriage Counseling, Unrequited third person feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:55:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25454254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phylwannabe/pseuds/Phylwannabe
Summary: Jon and Sansa have been married for four years. They are a team.  Since their honeymoon they  have been trying to make a baby.  Jon receives a message that Sansa is pregnant.  Good news, right?  Well...maybe not so much.Warning to anyone who might be upset with descriptions of infertility. This might be hard to read.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 55
Kudos: 136





	1. Jon

Jon Snow sat on the floor in the comfortable family room of the home he shared with Sansa Snow, formerly Stark. He fuzzily surveyed the mess surrounding him...four, five – no make that eight -- empty bottles, consumed and discarded in record time. Jon leaned his head back to rest on the seat of the couch that his oh so talented, and beautiful wife had personally upholstered. _Buck up, man,_ he mentally admonished himself. _Still time to polish off a few more before she gets home. You’ll need to be properly tanked if you’re gonna let your wife know that you are now onto all of her dirty little secrets...._

Jon reached for another bottle with one hand and reached up to push play on the answering machine with the other. This would be his third -- maybe fourth -- rewind of the recorded message received an hour ago. He had just gotten home and heard the phone ringing, racing to reach it and arriving just as the call went to recording. As a result the entire gods awful conversation was now recorded for posterity. _Bet Sans will regret her antiquated insistence on a land line and an answering machine after this..._

The message played once again. _This is Dr. Tarth._ Dr. Tarth was their fertility doctor at Seven Sisters Medical Center. _Please return this message as soon as possible. If calling after hours feel free to call my cell at...._

Jon heard his voice, sounding winded and out of breath, interrupt the Doctor on the recording.

“Doctor Tarth, it’s Jon. Sorry, I was just coming in from work.”

Brienne Tarth’s no-nonsense tone softened noticeably.

“Jon! So glad you were able to pick up. I have _wonderful_ news!”

Jon’s voice, now laden with skepticism, had replied. “What news?”

“Sansa came in for her bi-monthly appointment on Tuesday. I just got the results back. Sansa is pregnant. Congratulations!” 

Jon said nothing for a long moment, so long in fact that Dr. Tarth spoke up again. “I know you’re probably in shock, Jon. I mean after nearly four years of trying.... But you know, Sansa was so hopeful when she came in this week. She said she just felt like her luck, I mean, of course, _your_ luck, was about to change. And she was right!”

Jon took a long sip of his beer, waiting for the best part of the whole recorded conversation, the point where all the pieces had clicked for him – _Jon Snow, ye olde village cuckold._ Dr. Tarth had continued cheerfully rattling on. “I had just about given up hope for you two, I must admit. Given your particular challenges, it was a real long shot. But this just goes to prove that miracles _do_ happen.”

He heard his cool tone as he asked the fatal question, “Do you know when conception occurred, Dr. Tarth?” _Conception! What a polite term for what Sansa had to have done in order to get pregnant._

The good doctor chuckled. _She really was improving her bedside manner with this call._ “Oh, yes, I suppose you two will want to circle _that_ date in red for future celebrations. Well, I can’t be for certain until I can conduct a physical examination, but....” and here the recording picked up a brisk shuffling of papers, “...based upon our records, I would say it was approximately 40 days ago.”

After the recording ended, Jon had closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the couch, and tossed another empty onto the hardwood floor. He opened one eye and cast a glance around for an unopened bottle. _Nothing. Well, Jonny boy, if you really want to get stinking drunk, you are going to have to manage navigating yourself into the kitchen. Best do that before the Lady of the Hour gets home._

Jon pushed himself off the floor, using the couch for support. He levered himself to a standing position, then realized he was weaving back and forth like that infernal tube man at the local car dealership. Chuckling to himself, Jon started gingerly walking across the room toward the kitchen. As he flipped on the light over the sink, he heard scratching at the door. Ghost.

Jon ignored his dog’s quiet whines and shuffled to the fridge where he retrieved yet another six pack of his favorite brew. Sansa hardly ever drank beer, but she always made sure he had plenty in the fridge, knowing that he liked to toss back a few after a hard day’s work. Jon drew a bottle from the carton and twisted the cap. Raising the bottle in an imaginary toast, he spoke out loud. _To you, my darling wife, and to the anonymous better man who fucked you and put a baby in you when I couldn’t._

Ghost continued to scratch at the door. Jon shook his head and turned off the light. Even though Jon had raised him from a pup -- the runt of the litter -- and even though he was certainly Ghost’s one and only master, he knew that his dog was ultra-protective of his wife. _Best that you not be inside, Ghostie, when this all goes down. I might lose an arm or a leg!_

Jon made his way back into the den. He flopped onto the couch this time, waited until his head stopped spinning, and then glanced at his watch. _Six fifteen. The store closes at six and it takes her about thirty minutes to get home. You have about fifteen minutes to get yourself prepared. More liquid courage is definitely in order._

At six thirty-five ( _traffic must have been heavy),_ the lock on the front door turned. Sansa appeared in the doorway and stopped, face flushed from the cold, as she saw Jon sitting in the dark, feet flat on the floor, facing the door. “Jon. How long have you been home? Did you fall asleep and forget to turn the lights on again?” 

Jon said nothing. He looked at her as if he were observing a particularly interesting specimen under that gods forsaken microscope that Dr. Tarth used to critique his little swimmers. _All undoubtedly failures, just not quite up to the job._ Jon smirked at his own witticism and continued sipping on his beer.

Sansa unbuttoned her coat and removed her scarf and gloves. “Jon, answer me. Are you O.K?”

Jon grimaced and then tossed the last empty toward the trash can he had drug in from the kitchen. It missed by several feet, but hey, what could you expect from a man who’d had more than a few too many? He put his hands on his knees, preparing to push himself off the couch, but then decided it was too much effort. He could have this conversation sitting down.

“Just celebrating, _dearest_.” Sansa gave him a disgusted look over her shoulder even as she opened the closet to put her coat away. “Celebrating what? Did you land another _big_ contract?”

Jon shook his head and removed her hand with his own. “Even _better_ news, darling. But don’t let me spoil it.... you need to listen to it for yourself.” Waving his bottle in the air, Jon pointed toward the answering machine. Sansa gave him a puzzled look, hesitating before she moved to the side table where the answering machine was sitting. She pushed the button and the message began.

Jon closed his eyes. He couldn’t watch Sansa as she listened to the recording. He didn’t want to see her face when she learned that after nearly four years of trying, she was finally going to have a baby. It was her moment for sure but how ironic that he couldn’t share it. From the very first they had been in this together, a two person team with just one goal.

They married four years ago and right out of the gate, he and Sansa were ready to have kids. They had talked before their marriage and had decided that they would take no precautions. What would happen would happen. Jon knew that Sansa would be thrilled to make a baby on their honeymoon. The first few months of their marriage had been an orgy of love-making – fun for sure – but also filled with the unspoken but ever-present hope that Sansa would wind up pregnant.

When after about a year, it became obvious that just doing what comes naturally wasn’t working, they had visited Dr. Tarth and their lives quickly became a lab experiment. First came the disconcerting reality of planning their most intimate moments around Sansa’s cycles. Jon couldn’t count the number of times he had rushed home from work in the middle of the day after receiving a frantic text from his wife that she was ovulating and they had to do _it_ right then. His crew had teased their boss about all the _afternoon delight_ he was experiencing and he had gone along with their jibes, not willing to share that the actual experience was far from frisky or fun. Those sessions had been purely clinical. The sex was anxious and centered around techniques that were designed to make sure that whatever Jon produced went exactly where it could do the most good. How could any man feel even remotely sexy when his wife’s ass was propped on so many pillows that reaching her was like climbing Mt. Everest?

Then when the natural way, _if you could call it that_ , didn’t take, they had moved on to the test tube approach. _Artificial insemination_. This required Jon to routinely go into a private room at the hospital and jerk off until he produced what was needed. It then got handed off to Podrick, Dr. Tarth’s assistant, who nine times out of ten was waiting just outside the door. Jon had been humiliated. What normal man wouldn’t be? Despite the embarrassment, Jon loved Sansa and he would have taken himself in hand in the middle of the ER waiting room if that was what it took to make Sansa happy. Still, month after heartbreaking month, all their efforts came to nothing.

Six months ago, Dr. Tarth had ordered tests. _We really need to find out if either of you have some issues that are keeping you from getting pregnant._ Jon remembered how nervous Sansa was after they completed the barrage of tests. She was certain it was her fault, some defect possibly caused by ill treatment she had received from a past abusive boyfriend. Jon had held her in his arms and assured her that couldn’t be the case. Even as he comforted Sansa, he had never considered the possibility that he was the problem.

Dr. Tarth had sat them down in her office. Sansa was fine: all parts in the proper place, ovaries chugging along, eggs producing at a normal rate. There was no reason that she couldn’t get pregnant and carry a child successfully to term. He remembered Sansa beaming and reaching over to grab his hand, placing it directly on her stomach. Dr. Tarth had coughed at that and Jon realized she wasn’t quite finished with her report. Dr. Tarth explained that a problem had been found, a problem that was most certainly the reason that the young couple hadn’t been able to conceive despite all their best efforts. Low sperm count. Dr. Tarth had given them the odds for pregnancy: not a million to one, no that was just an exaggerated idiom; the reality was more like 50 to 1. _Still not the kind of odds that any sane betting man would take._

While Tarth clinically discussed his lack of fertility, Jon had somewhat hysterically thought that if he had only had this information while in college, and if he had been so inclined, he and his cock _sans condom_ could have repeatedly ploughed through the entire female population at White Harbor for four years with no worries at all.

At that point, Sansa had become the cheerleader, the captain of the team. _Could Jon do something to boost his sperm count? Diet, exercise, vitamin supplements, anything?_ Dr. Tarth had explained that while Jon could likely shoot a load clear across the room when properly stimulated, his swimmers just didn’t have what it took to make it across the finish line. The likelihood of Jon getting Sansa pregnant by natural means was very slim. The doctor had finished the session by encouraging them to consider other methods for starting a family.

If Sansa was crushed, she certainly did a great job of hiding it. His wife had acted like this devastating news was no big deal. For the first week or so after their meeting with Dr. Tarth, she had cheerfully encouraged Jon to think about a brand new type of artificial insemination, the kind where he wouldn’t be involved _at all._ Another man’s sperm would do the trick and then Jon would just step in and assume the paterfamilias role. _Easy peezy._ Jon listened grimly to his wife’s upbeat proposal, told her he needed some time to think about it, and then promptly went outside and threw up.

Jon had asked Sansa to consider adoption. _There were lots of kids out there that needed good homes and even if they couldn’t adopt a newborn, surely there was a child somewhere that would be perfect for them._ Jon had pushed the adoption brochures toward her while Sansa had sat in the kitchen chair opposite Jon, her delicate hands folded primly in her lap, and her devastatingly blue eyes fixed firmly on a spot right over Jon’s shoulder. Even as he made his case he knew that Sansa wasn’t listening. She wanted her _own_ child. She wanted to feel life moving and kicking inside her, to experience morning sickness and three a.m. cravings, to suffer from swollen feet and stretch marks. In general, everything Jon now knew he couldn’t give her.

For the first time in their marriage, Jon and Sansa were not batting for the same team. Hell, they weren’t even playing the same game. Sansa stayed up late, sewing, reading, or watching sappy movies on the Hallmark channel. Jon got up early and left for work before Sansa started stirring. They stopped kissing each other hello and goodbye, then they stopped talking altogether. Finally, one Saturday night when Jon had had a few too many, he came home to find the bedroom door locked. As he read the post-it note stuck on the door – _it might be best if we sleep apart for awhile –_ he realized that he wasn’t even upset about being tossed out of his own bed.

They hadn’t slept together in several months. Jon stopped going to the fertility clinic with Sansa. What was the point when the only thing he could contribute to the effort was woefully inadequate? He had a vague notion that Sansa still kept her appointments although he had no earthly idea why. Dr. Tarth’s call that afternoon had suddenly made the reason for Sansa’s persistence all too clear. Sansa hadn’t quit playing; she had just switched up batters. There were really only two possibilities: either Sansa was being injected full of some other man’s spunk at the clinic or else it was being inserted the old fashioned way. While either option was a dagger in Jon’s heart, at this point he was leaning toward the tried and true explanation. Why else would Sansa have thrown him out of his own bedroom? She had gotten involved with someone else and didn’t need him anymore. _Bet it’s that Dickon Tarly! He’s always hanging around Sansa’s shop pretending to be buying his girlfriend a present!_ _A gift my ass!_

Sansa was pregnant and Dr. Tarth thought a miracle had happened. _Boy, wouldn’t the good doctor be surprised to learn just how babies were made in the real world, the world that didn’t involve test tubes and husbands frantically jacking off. The world where your wife would just go out and find someone who could give her what she wanted...._

Jon came back to himself as Sansa clicked off the machine. He swallowed hard against the acid that threatened to bubble up into his mouth. Jon blearily watched Sansa as she stood silently, one finger on the _stop_ button, her other hand covering her mouth.

Sansa turned to face her husband, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears, a tremulous smile crossing her lovely face. “Jon, _I’m pregnant_. I’m really pregnant?”

Jon nodded, tipping his empty bottle at her. “Someday, when you have time, you _must_ tell me how you managed it.” 

Sansa sat down on the chair opposite the couch, her hands fluttering around the collar of her blouse, her pretty face flushed from excitement. “What do you mean, Jon? Aren’t you excited too? _I’m having a baby_!”

Jon pushed himself to his feet, suddenly desperate at that moment to be anywhere but with his wife. “Yes, _you_ are. Should that excite me, dearest? After all, you did it all by yourself.” He stood over her, weaving on his feet. “Well....technically, not _all_ by yourself. You had some help, right?” He ran his hands through his messy curls and started stumbling toward the door, grabbing his jacket from the chair where he had tossed it as he ran to answer the phone. Jon grabbed the door handle and held on for dear life as he turned to face his wife. “When do I get to meet the lucky guy? Give me a heads up before you bring him over, won’t ya? I’ll want to be properly fortified.”

Jon turned to leave. _What in seven hells was wrong with the door knob?_ As Jon fumbled with the latch, he suddenly felt his shoulders being wrenched back and he was spun around so hard that he lost his precarious footing and fell to the floor.

Sansa stood over him, her hands clenched into white knuckled fists, her voice trembling, “How dare you, Jon Snow! How _dare_ you?”

_Why is she so angry? I’m the one who should be mad!_ Jon managed to lever himself onto one elbow, just in time to receive a well-placed kick from his wife’s high heel which laid him out flat on the floor.

“Do you honestly believe that I was with another man? That I was unfaithful to _you!_?”

Jon tried to focus but there were just too many angry Sansas looming over him. He closed his eyes and whispered, “How else could it have happened? I can’t do it, ya know. I can’t give you a baby, Sans, no matter how much I want to.” He coughed and rolled over, realizing that he was very, very close to being sick.

Dimly, Jon heard Sansa crying as if her heart was breaking. He tried to move, but his body refused to cooperate. His head fell back, hitting the hardwood beneath him, and everything finally, mercifully, went dark.


	2. The Greyjoy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa calls a good friend to help her with Jon. Theon answers the call because he loves Sansa. Once he arrives, he figures out that while Jon is drunk, there is a bigger problem.

Theon Greyjoy leaned against the door of Sansa’s guest room, chest heaving, cursing under his breath. Sansa had called Theon, pleading with him to come help her get Jon off the floor and into a bed. If it had been anyone other than Sansa, whom Theon had always loved like a little sister, he would have refused. But here he was, likely to suffer back strain for a week or two, looking at the bane of his existence sprawled out on the bed before him.

Theon had just clocked off his shift at the Winterfell Police Department when Sansa had called him, tears flooding her voice. "I didn’t know anyone else to call, Tee. Can you please come?" Then voice so low he could barely hear her, "Jon’s never been like this before. I can’t get him to wake up."

If there was anything that Theon Greyjoy knew something about, it was how to go about sobering up a drunk. Theon had hugged Sansa hard when he arrived, demanded that she put Ghost back outside, _not gonna take a chance on gettin’ wolf bit,_ and then had taken a look into the trash bin where Sansa, neat freak that she was, had already deposited all the evidence of Jon’s bender. Theon whistled under his breath. He had known Jon to drink himself silly when they were younger, but never since he started dating Sansa, and certainly not since the two had gotten married. The pile of empties in the garbage can told the tale of a man who was intentionally trying to get wasted.

With Sansa’s help, he had gotten Jon to a sitting position on the floor. When shaking Jon and yelling in his ear elicited no response, Theon had resorted to slapping his face. _Nothing_. Jon Snow wasn’t ever going to be on the _Greyjoy Top Five Favorite Guy_ list, but this was serious and Theon couldn’t stand to look at Sansa knowing how frightened she must be right now. "C’mon, Snow" he muttered as he stood and then pulled Jon’s body up, leaning the heavy bastard against a chair that Sansa had pulled toward him. Jon flopped bonelessly, resembling nothing so much as one of those silly looking marionettes with the strings that you saw in puppet shows. _Seriously, this is the guy she gets all hot and bothered over?_

Theon blew air out of his mouth in exasperation. "I’m gonna get him into the shower and see if we can wake him up. Sans, you need to brew some coffee and I want a whole pot, black and strong." Noting that Jon was totally out cold, he elaborated, "I’ll get it down him if I have to use an oil funnel."

Sansa gave him a bit of a lost look and for a moment she seemed so fragile that Theon was tempted to drop her husband in the floor and grab her so that she wouldn’t collapse. Then she took a deep breath, nodded, and moved resolutely toward the kitchen.

Theon wrapped Jon’s arms around his shoulders and began laboriously dragging the unconscious man down the hallway to the bath with the walk-in shower. When Theon got Jon inside the bathroom, he lugged him into the shower stall, clothes and all, and left him slumping against the title. Theon reached up, adjusted the shower head so that it would hit Jon full force, and then turned on the cold water. 

The frigid shower blast seemed to work as Jon began muttering incoherently a few minutes later. Theon had removed his jacket with the detective’s badge on the lapel, and had rolled his shirt sleeves up. He reached into the shower and began prodding Jon. For his trouble, he got a face full of water as Jon started shaking his head, black curls sending water spewing left and right. Irritated. Theon reached in and pulled Jon to his feet. "C’mon, Jon, we’ve got to get you moving."

"Lemme ‘lone" came a slurred reply. Theon angrily pulled the shower head off and manually began blasting Jon full in the face with it. Jon sputtered and coughed, then reached out, more forcefully than Theon would have expected, and grabbed the shower head, shoving it to the side. "Lemme ‘lone!"

Theon turned the water off abruptly, and pulled Jon out, plopping his ass on the toilet. "Sit right there and don’t move. I’m gonna get you dried off and then we are gonna get some coffee in you."

Jon suddenly looked up at the man above him, eyes wide, with a panicked expression on his face. Theon knew that look all too well. _Oh, fuck, here it comes._ Jon bent over at the waist, his mouth helplessly opening and closing, and started to heave.

Sansa picked that moment to appear in the doorway. Her hand went to her mouth and she turned green. _Gods, don’t you pass out on me, Sans._ Theon grabbed the pot of coffee in her hand and pushed the door shut. Jon was still dry heaving so Theon yanked him off the toilet onto the floor and somehow managed to get his head pointed in the right direction just in the nick of time.

At some point the stench became too much so Theon flipped on the fan, opened the door and stuck his head out into the hallway, gasping the fresh air gratefully. Jon continued retching in the background behind him for what seemed like an eternity. When Jon’s heaves finally slowed and then stopped, Theon edged back into the room and pulled Jon to his feet.

Thirty minutes later the designer decorated guest room, _Sansa’s work no doubt,_ looked like a cyclone had hit it, what with wet clothes and towels strewn all across the floor. Jon Snow laid crossways across the bed, dark hair spread across a pillow, clad only in his damp boxers, and snoring loud enough to wake the dead. Theon watched him from the doorway. Jon was likely going to sleep the rest of the night away and wake up sometime around noon with a massive headache. _Serves him right, the idiot._ Theon dimmed the lights, shut the door softly, and went to find Sansa.

Jon hadn’t needed the black coffee after all but Theon put it to good use. Sansa brewed some herbal tea and came to sit at the kitchen table with him. It was nearly midnight and Sansa looked done in. "Thank you, Tee. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come to help."

"You’d have been fine, sweetheart. Why didn’t you call Ned or Robb?" 

Sansa shook her head. "I couldn’t call them." She looked at him with sad wide eyes. "You know how much Jon looks up to Dad and how much he still tries his best to impress Mom. He would be so humiliated to have them know he got like this. And Robb...Robb, the prosecutor, would have had so many questions." She looked at him with a hollow expression. "I don’t think either of us can answer that many questions right now." She laughed mirthlessly, her polished nails skimming the surface of her tea mug. "I _could_ have called Arya and Gendry. Gendry is just as strong as you and Arya thinks Jon can do no wrong, you know. But they’re still out of town on that trip to the Western Isles."

Theon got up from his chair and moved to refill his coffee cup. "So, when push came to shove, you called _The Greyjoy_." Sansa looked at him fondly and reached for his free hand when he sat back down, pulling it toward her. " _The Greyjoy_ came through for us tonight, that’s for sure. Thank you, Theon."

Theon looked at his best friend’s little sister, the girl he had been half in love with growing up, and saw a beautiful woman whose usually impeccable edges were fraying from the stress of dealing with her jackass of a husband. "Will you be alright by yourself tonight, Sansa? I can stay...,sleep on the couch if you need me to."

Sansa sat back in her chair and Theon missed the soft pressure of her hand on his. "No, Tee, I’ll be fine. Jon will be fine too once he wakes up. He probably won’t even remember much of tonight. You go on home now. I know that you’re tired."

Theon leaned back in his chair, pushing the legs off the floor. He drummed his fingers on the table top and looked at her speculatively. "You know what I think, Sans. I think Jon has a big problem. I don’t exactly love the guy like you do, but I know him well enough to know that he wouldn’t have gotten plastered tonight for no reason. And while I don’t know what’s got him tied into knots, I’m betting you do."

Theon sat the chair back down with a thud and rose to his feet. He pulled his jacket on and pushed his hands deep into his trouser pockets. "I also know this won’t get better unless you guys can talk it out." As Theon reached the back door, he stopped and looked over his shoulder at Sansa. "Can you do that, Sans? Can you talk it out with Jon?"

Sansa closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "I hope so, Theon. For the sake of our marriage, I truly hope so."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the impassioned comments and interest shown in this story to date. As a result of that interest I realize that this story deserves to be longer and that it will take a few more chapters to get these two lost souls back on track. Please don't judge Sansa too harshly. She has made some mistakes, but I think she will become more sympathetic as we move along.  
> Also, just in case you are wondering, there is nothing between Theon and Sansa, not because Theon wouldn't be interested but because Sansa is only interested in one man.


	3. Sansa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa looks in on a sleeping Jon and considers their situation.

Sansa closed the back door and threw the dead bolt in place. Before he left, Theon had admonished her several times to be sure that the house was secured before she went to sleep. Sansa leaned her body against the locked door and closed her eyes. She was tired beyond belief and wanted nothing more than to find her bed and crawl into it. Hearing the familiar sound of a tail thumping on the floor, she opened one eye to find Ghost sitting at her feet. "Waiting for me, boy?" She touched the dog’s collar and then rubbed her fingers through the thick white fur along his back, earning a low rumble of delight from her canine friend. She bent at the waist and kissed Ghost on the top of his head. Sansa pointed to the bowls sitting by the side of the doorway. "Get a drink, good boy, and then we’ll decide where you will sleep tonight."

Ghost padded after her as she made her way down the hallway toward the guest room. The door was closed. Sansa’s hand closed around the handle but she paused before turning the latch. Ghost whined and butted her leg with his huge head. Nodding, Sansa took a deep breath and opened the door.

The room was dark, but the light from the hallway was enough so that Sansa could see the dim outline of her husband lying on the bed. As her eyes adjusted, she began to notice the clothes and towels strewn across the floor. _Theon may be a lifesaver but he will never win a Good Housekeeping award._

Despite her weary state, Sansa was her mother’s daughter, and as such was incapable of ignoring domestic mess. She moved about the room picking up. Silently directing Ghost to keep watch on his sleeping master, she gathered the pile into her arms and carried it to the laundry room where she tossed it into a basket. It could all be sorted out in the morning. Sansa then went back to the bedroom and found Ghost curled up beside Jon. _I guess that settles the question of where you’re spending the night._

Ghost’s red eyes followed her as she approached the bed and looked down at Jon. He was lying on his stomach, face turned to the side, dark lashes stark against his pale face, with his curls spread across the pillow like breeze blown ribbons on a May Day pole. He looked young, almost innocent, and Sansa’s heart seized when she realized Jon’s mouth was slightly open and he was softly snoring. _Why is he so gods damned beautiful?_

Sansa noticed that Jon’s boxers were molded to his body, showing every arc and crevice of his too perfect ass. They were obviously wet. While Theon had mostly undressed Jon, he obviously had thought it above his pay grade to deal with damp underwear. Sansa bit her lower lip: _Uggh, I would never want to sleep all night in those!_ She looked at Ghost to find the dog’s head up, big paws spread out by Jon’s body. In response to her wordless question, the beast cocked his head as if to say, _It’s all up to you. I don’t have opposable thumbs._

Sansa gingerly leaned one knee onto the bed and grabbed the waistband of Jon’s shorts, sliding them slowly down over his hips. Once she had worked them past his cheeks, Sansa stood, took a deep breath and in one fluid motion pulled them down his legs and completely off. Blushing - _Why am I blushing? It’s not like I haven’t seen his ass before! -_ she pulled the duvet from the foot of the bed and threw it over her husband’s lower body. _"Stay"_ she mouthed to Ghost and moved swiftly out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Morning came and Sansa’s alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. sharp. Eyes shut, she blindly reached for her phone and attempted unsuccessfully to paw it into silence. After the third interval, she groaned and pushed herself up to a sitting position. It was Friday – Sansa’s day to open the store and accept the end of week deliveries. Sansa thumbed the alarm off; keeping the covers across her body, she wearily drug her legs over the side of the bed. She felt awful but that was only to be expected. By the time she finally made it into bed, she had realized only about four hours of sleep and the night before certainly hadn’t been a relaxing evening of lounging around on the couch. Sansa nodded to herself, _You can do this!,_ and began to push her tired body out of the bed when she suddenly realized that she had a bigger problem than exhaustion. _Oh, gods, I’m going to be sick._ Sansa threw the covers off and ran for the bathroom.

As Sansa leaned over the toilet for the fourth time in an hour, she realized that she wasn’t going to make it to work. Between bouts of stomach upset she managed to grab her phone, texting Margaery, telling her that she was fighting some kind of bug ( _not a total lie),_ and asking if she could please open the store for her. After receiving Margie’s "thumbs up" emoji, Sansa breathed a sigh of relief. She was taking a well deserved day off.

An hour later, Sansa finally made it to the kitchen and put the kettle on to boil. While waiting for her tea to brew, she toasted bread and ate the first piece standing at the counter. She had heard that dry toast could help settle morning sickness and hoped it was true. Loading up a tray with her mug and her breakfast, Sansa moved into the den and curled up on the sofa, turning the radio on at a low volume.

Sansa was a type A personality, a detail person, and she knew she had to make plans in light of the evening before. First and foremost, she needed time to process the news that Dr. Tarth had delivered. _She was pregnant_. She sipped her hot tea, grimacing at the burn as it slid down her throat. _Am I happy? I should be happy!_ Sansa felt tears forming in her eyes. Of all the ways she had envisioned receiving the news that she was expecting, last night was not one of the scenarios. _Jon should be celebrating this with me instead of sleeping it off in the guest room. Why can’t he understand how much this means to me?_

Sansa shook herself. Allowing herself to wallow in self-pity would get her nowhere. She needed to call Dr. Tarth and make an appointment. Likely the doctor would want to consult with her OB-GYN and Sansa would need to start with vitamins and other pre-natal care as soon as possible.

Sansa wanted to keep the news quiet for a while until she was sure that the pregnancy was going to last. She didn’t think she would be able to personally stand the disappointment if something happened to the baby, but she was certain she couldn’t handle sharing long-awaited news with her family and friends only to see the pity in their eyes if it ended badly. 

Sansa sighed and pulled her feet further under her. She couldn’t ignore the elephant in the room any longer. Sansa had _not_ been cheating on her husband with another man and she was deeply hurt that Jon would ever think so. It was a sign of the troubled state of their marriage that he had even considered that she might sleep with someone else. Surely, by all the seven, Jon would realize that when he sobered up! But that didn’t change the fact that she had kept information from her husband. Now that Jon _knew_ she had moved forward with fertility treatments without his approval – _Sansa, be honest, without even his knowledge –_ she needed to have a conversation with her husband -- the sooner the better.

Sansa looked out the floor to ceiling windows that sat on either side of a huge fireplace. Jon had installed an in-ground pool and landscaped the back yard, all to her specifications. For that matter he had personally remodeled the house they had bought right before they married, turning it into the home of his wife’s dreams. He did all that while running a construction business that was now annually earning in the low seven figures. Jon had been a wonderful husband and Sansa knew he would be the best father ever.

Sansa Stark had been madly in love with Jon Snow since she was eight years old and her older brother had brought a quiet, painfully shy boy home after the first day of middle school. While in college Jon had finally admitted that he was as mad about Sansa Stark as she was him and Sansa had been sure that nothing would ever come between them. Even when the couple had learned that getting pregnant would be a challenge, they were a team, united in their effort to beat infertility. Jon had been a rock for Sansa each time her period inevitably arrived, crushing her hopes for yet another month. She hadn’t thought it possible to love him more than she had when they married but as she saw everything he did to give her a baby, to support her, Sansa’s heart had been full to bursting with her adoration for her beautiful man. Then it had all changed...

Ever since Dr. Tarth had delivered the devastating news about his fertility, Jon had seemed so distant, so remote, that she had found it impossible to talk to him. She knew that she had to tell Jon she was continuing with fertility treatments and that she and Dr. Tarth had made some careful decisions. Frustrated by Jon’s withdrawal, Sansa had even misled Dr. Tarth, forging Jon’s signature on the necessary paperwork. As they progressed, she had been on edge, needing to initiate a discussion with her brooding husband, but always putting it off, hoping for the perfect moment. Then Jon had stopped coming home right after work like he always had since they married. When he finally did arrive, hours late, he would reek of beer and cigarette smoke to the point that she couldn’t stand to sleep next to him. The final straw had been the night that he had called her, obviously intoxicated, and told her he had lost his keys. Knowing that he was plastered and shouldn’t be driving anyway, Sansa had been fully prepared to go pick him up until she heard a woman’s sultry voice in the background, urging him to hang up the phone and _Come upstairs, Darlin’_. Sansa had locked her bedroom door that evening and told her husband, _via post-it note_ , to keep out. To be honest, after that night she had lost any real desire to talk to her husband. Now she had no choice. _If_ she wanted to stay married to Jon Snow, _if_ he was going to be a father to her baby, she needed to clear the air and make things right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be the first time that Jon and Sansa attempt to talk it out. It will not be pretty.


	4. The Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Sansa talk. It doesn't end like Sansa expects. Angst, a LOT of angst, ensues. r

After eating breakfast, Sansa had felt much better and she felt inspired to use the rest of the morning to tick items off of her mental "to do" list. Sansa had called Dr. Tarth’s office promptly at 9:00 a.m. The clinic’s scheduling assistant informed her that, as luck would have it, there had been a last minute cancellation for late that afternoon and, _if Mrs. Snow would like,_ she could slot her in for a thirty minute appointment with Dr. Tarth. Next Sansa had called Edd Tollett at White Wolf Contracting to inform her husband’s construction foreman that Jon was a "bit under the weather" but _might_ check in later that day. She then called Margaery to make sure that the shop was running smoothly and she and her partner spent half an hour discussing the new line of lotions and sprays that had been delivered just that morning. Promising Margie that she would give serious thought to the design for a new front window display, she then took a shower, dried her hair, and dressed in leggings and a warm thigh length sweater.

After getting her first round of morning sickness under control, Sansa had opened the guest room door and Ghost had made a beeline out of the room to the back yard. Otherwise there hadn’t been so much as a peep from the guest room. Theon had opined that Jon would probably _sleep it off_ for most of the day and as much as Sansa wanted to talk to her husband, she thought it might be best to let him wake up on his own.

Sansa put Jon’s clothes in the washer, rescuing his phone and a very damp wallet from the pocket of his jeans in the process. While she was waiting to do a load of towels, the house phone rang. It was her Mum. Cat Stark had tried to reach her at the store and when Margie told her that Sansa was sick, she had immediately dialed Sansa’s cell phone. Sansa squirmed as she assured Catelyn that while she and Jon must have both come down with _the bug that was going around,_ she was already feeling much better and, in fact, had plans to go out that afternoon. Sansa firmly declined Catelyn’s offer to bring lunch over, slightly panicked that she would not be able to dissuade her very determined mother from making the 20 minute trip between their houses. Finally, her mother hung up, somewhat mollified by Sansa’s fervent assurances that they were both fine, _just fine,_ and it wasn’t necessary for her to check on her daughter and son-in-law in person.

Exhausted from dealing with her Mum, Sansa had opened the back door when she heard Ghost whining. Being the very good dog that he was, Ghost patiently sat by his bowls until Sansa had time to fill them with food and fresh water. Serving Ghost lunch made Sansa realize she was getting hungry too. Sansa fixed a sandwich and grabbed an apple from the bowl on the kitchen counter. She took her food back into the den and sat at the table before the windows, intending to enjoy the winter scenery outside as she ate.

Halfway through her turkey and avocado sandwich, Sansa heard the bedroom door open. She froze, waiting until she heard the bathroom door open and shut. Swallowing hard, her appetite suddenly gone, Sansa took her plate back to the kitchen and sat it in the sink. She heard quiet movement behind her and turned to find Jon watching her from the doorway.

Sansa leaned against the sink. "How are you feeling?"

Jon merely shrugged his shoulders in response and moved to grab a drinking glass from the cabinet which he then filled with water from the fridge.

Jon took a drink of water as he turned back to Sansa. "I guess I’ve felt better. You?"

Sansa sighed and looked down at her bare toes. "I’ve been better too, Jon."

Jon sat down at the kitchen table. His dark curls obscured his face as he sipped his water quietly.

Sansa moved to sit at the other end of the table, taking a good look at her bedraggled husband. He was wearing his horn rims but they did nothing to obscure the dark bruises under his eyes. He face was wan and pale and he looked as if he had lost weight. _He looks so sad,_ she thought.

The young couple sat quietly for long moments, neither willing to break the tenuous peace between them. Finally, Jon sat his glass down and leaned his elbows upon the table, propping his chin on his tented fingers. "Sans, we _need_ to talk."

"I know. I just don’t know where to start."

Jon snorted. "That’s a first! Sansa Stark at a loss for words!"

Sansa smiled weakly, her eyes brimming. "I don’t know where this is going to end up, but I guess the first thing I need to say is that I’m sorry I kicked you after you fell on the floor last night. I don’t have any excuse for that except that I was _so_ angry!"

Jon shook his head wearily. "Sans, I was so plastered, I don’t even _remember_ last night. What did I do?"

Sansa tried to keep her tone level, but failed. "You _accused_ me of cheating on you, Jon. I have _never_ cheated on you and I _never_ would! How could you think that of me?"

Jon pulled his glasses off and closed his eyes. "I was angry too. I know you wouldn’t ever cheat on me, but I was so angry and hurt after I took the message from Dr. Tarth..."

Sansa tugged on her long braid in frustration. "Why are you angry? _I’m pregnant_. Isn’t that what we have been hoping for all these years? I don’t understand."

Jon’s dark gaze skewered Sansa like a bug under a magnifying glass. "That’s the problem, Sans. I’ve realized that you don’t understand my feelings at all. What’s more, I don’t think you much care how I feel."

Sansa stood up and started pacing in agitation. "What do you want me to say?" She stopped and faced him, her hands curled at her sides. "All right, Jon! I admit it! I went _behind_ your back. I _met_ with Dr. Tarth without your knowledge. But it was clear to me that you had given up on us having a baby. _I_ wasn’t ready to give up. And I won’t say that I’m sorry for what I did. I would do it all again because it worked, Jon, it worked and..."

Sansa stopped, her breath ragged, a sudden stitch in her side. She pressed a hand against the pain at her waist and turned away from the silent man sitting at the table. "I’m going into the den. I need to get comfortable."

Sansa fell into the plush cushions of the sofa and pulled a pillow into her arms, hugging it hard. She was holding on to her fraying emotions by the thinnest of threads. Ghost chose that moment to jump up on the sofa, nosing her arm in concern. Sansa buried her face in the soft white fur and let the tears flow.

"Sansa." Sansa sniffled and looked up, still holding on to Ghost. Jon stood there, holding his wallet and phone. A duffel bag sat on the floor beside him. _How long have I been sitting here sobbing my eyes out?_ Jon was dressed in his usual uniform: jeans, dark shirt, and worn leather jacket, the watch she had given him last Christmas on his left wrist, and Doc Martens on his feet. He moved to the occasional chair at the end of the couch and sat down wearily while Sansa pulled a tissue from the box on the table next to her, dabbing her wet cheeks. She was ready for him to continue their argument when out of the blue his voice brought her up short.

"When was the last time I made you cum with my mouth?"

Sansa turned her head, incredulous. " _What_?"

Head down, Jon repeated. "When was the last time I made you cum with my mouth?"

Sansa shook her head in astonishment. _Clearly he was still under the influence._ "I don’t know. Why in the world do you want to talk about that right now?"

Jon looked up at her, his heart in his eyes. "Because I can’t remember the last time I did, and all I know is that once upon a time that was the thing I loved to do most with you...for you." Jon smiled in his endearing way. "You always seemed to like it too."

Sansa pushed Ghost off the couch and scooted along the seat until she was closer to Jon. She took his hand. "I don’t understand, Jon. Why does that matter so much right now?"

Jon covered her hand with both of his larger ones and glanced at it as if he were looking upon a rare orchid in bloom. He rubbed his calloused fingers along her own and finally pressed his dry, soft lips upon her knuckles. Sansa swallowed hard, a fluttery feeling in her stomach.

"I think it was before we began the trips to the clinic. I’m pretty sure..." Jon squeezed her hand once before letting go and sitting back in his chair. "How about the last time you can remember coming home from work, wanting me so badly that you were dripping between your thighs?"

Sansa’s mouth made an "O" but she couldn’t say a word. If her husband had intended to win the argument by rendering her speechless, it was working. This wasn’t the conversation she had planned for. After a moment of consideration, she responded in a small voice. "I can’t remember."

Jon dropped his head, nodding at her quiet confession. "Me either."

Sansa’s face felt hot. She took the hand that Jon had so recently held in his own and rubbed over her mouth. "I don’t understand what you are trying to do, Jon."

"I don’t have any ulterior motives, Sansa. When I woke up today, I thought about the fact that it seems like all of our married life has been focused on getting you pregnant."

"We decided we wanted that, Jon."

Jon looked over at her with the crooked, embarrassed little grin she had fallen for the first time she saw it on his face. "Sweetheart, I wanted a child as much as you. I _really_ did. Every time I thought about getting you pregnant, about how beautiful you would look with my baby in your belly, well, just that image was enough to give me a raging hard-on. That first year, I couldn’t wait to get home to you at night. I couldn’t wait to make love to you, to look into your eyes as I moved inside you."

Sansa had to swallow hard against the feelings Jon was stirring in her, memories that she had long ago consigned to a remote part of her memory. His voice had deepened to a raspy whisper that she strained to hear. "Sans, at some point we lost what made us special. We forgot that having a baby would be evidence of our love for each other, that it would tell the world how much we meant to each other. Getting you pregnant became more important than loving each other. Face it, this last year or so, we haven’t made love. We haven’t even acted like we loved each other. We have just been guinea pigs participating in a lab experiment."

Jon stood and moved to where the duffel bag was sitting on the floor. _He can’t be leaving, not now!_ Sansa stood and rushed to Jon, pulling at the arm that had picked up the bag.

"Where are you going? Are you leaving me?"

Jon looked down at a tear-streaked face. "I’m going to the office. I think I’ll bunk there for awhile."

Sansa pawed at his arm. "Jon, don’t go, _please_ don’t go! I need you here with me right now. I love you, you must know that!"

Jon blinked against the tears that threatened to spill from his own eyes at her admission. "I love you too, Sans. I will always love you. But I don’t _like_ you very much right now and I need to be by myself in order to figure this all out." He pressed a long, lingering kiss on her forehead and then pulled away. Sansa sobbed and wrapped her suddenly empty arms around her stomach.

Jon stopped, tightening his grip on the duffel as he opened the front door. Ghost had followed him. Jon smiled at the pup and tilted his head in a way that Ghost recognized. _Stay,_ Jon whispered. _Take care of her for me._ The dog solemnly nudged his head against his master’s leg and sat down. Jon gave one last look back and then slipped quietly through the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Jon has moved out. Sansa will come to realize how much she relied upon her husband and how much she (maybe) took him for granted. Jon will decide to go to counselling and we will begin to see that Jon has even more issues than the circumstances of Sansa's pregnancy to deal with. This will be a long haul for our young couple but I promise brighter days are ahead. Oh, and more will be revealed about just how Sansa got pregnant.


	5. Sage Advice from Dolorous Edd

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and his construction foreman, Edd Tollett, talk while driving back from an inspection in Greywater. Edd is happily married and gives some advice to a clearly miserable Jon. Will Jon follow Edd's sage counsel?
> 
> Easter eggs: 1) there is a reference to an SNL comedy skit. Bonus points for the name of the original skit that is referenced to in the story. This is just a fun reference I worked into the chapter in honor of Kit's appearance on SNL;  
> 2) There is an even more obscure reference to the recent joint appearance of Kit and Tobias Menzies for Birth UK. Extra bonus points if you get that one!

Jon climbed into the driver’s seat of the company truck, pulling his hard hat off and tossing it onto the dash. He started the engine, hitting the defroster, while Edd climbed into the passenger seat. "Well Boss, things seem to be going as well as we could hope for given the crap weather lately."

Jon put both hands on the wheel and squinted through the heavy rain sluicing down the windshield despite the wipers moving at top speed. He wiped moisture off his face and began rummaging around in the console between the seats, hoping to find something to tie his unruly, wet curls back from his face. He shook his head in disgust.

"We’re still almost three weeks behind schedule. The city fathers are going to be breathin’ down our necks pretty soon if we can’t get this project back on track."

Jon and Edd had left for Greywater before daylight that morning in order to personally inspect what was certainly White Wolf Contracting’s biggest commercial project to date. Jon’s company had won the bid to build Greywater’s first municipal auditorium which would be a showcase for the growing community – a venue for local college basketball games, conventions, and for arena events. Jon had designed and presented the detailed plans himself and Edd suspected that it was Jon’s personal involvement which had finally sealed the deal.

Edd Tollett enjoyed working for Jon Snow. Interested in construction since high school, he had worked for lots of contractors, but none were so purely talented as his present boss. Edd had watched Jon build White Wolf literally from the ground up. While all the other contractors in Winterfell were scoffing at the notion that a pretty college boy would be willing and able to do the hard physical labor essential for success in the construction field, Jon had simply gone to work. Jon had graduated from White Harbour University with a double major in Architecture and Business and he quickly used those talents to distinguish himself from the rest of the pack. Jon had begun designing homes which he advertised to young couples just starting out, marketing the houses as economical, energy efficient, and a cut or two in quality above the _box like_ designs which most builders mass produced. Beyond his special talents, Jon had proved himself willing to work as hard as any other man on a job site. He had become the premier residential builder in the North within just four years after graduating from college.

When Jon decided on a major expansion of his business, he had offered a partnership to his construction foreman, Tormund Giantsbane. Tormund had taken over the day-to-day supervision of the residential division while Jon became overall chief of operations and supervisor for the fledgling commercial division. Edd Tollett had been hired as foreman of commercial construction and he had been with Jon ever since. Tollett didn’t think he would ever leave White Wolf. Jon expected nothing less than top effort from his employees, but he paid well and he never asked someone who worked for him to do something he wouldn’t do himself.

Because Jon’s employees tended to be very loyal, Jon had been forced to "clean house" only once. Jon had fired Alliser Thorne and Janos Slynt, two bad apples who had been caught selling Jon’s designs to the Lannisters. Jon had cut them off without so much as a day’s pay in severance. It was the first time Edd had seen Jon be that ruthless, but he had admired the younger man’s decisive action. You couldn’t let a couple of weasels get their claws into your business or you would soon find yourself dead in the water. Not only had Jon fired the two men, but he had let the other local construction firms know just exactly why he had canned them. As a result Thorne and Slynt couldn’t find jobs anywhere in the North. Last Edd heard, the two jerks had headed off to Essos to try to find work.

Jon pulled into a gas station just off the Kingsroad to fill up the big truck for the trip home. "Want anythin’?" he asked as he headed into the store to pay. Edd nodded to an offer of coffee and watched Jon pull his jacket over his head to go inside. He thought about his boss....

People who didn’t know Jon very well often thought him to be brooding, distant, and even cold. But Edd had seen Jon laugh – really laugh – more times than he could count. He remembered how Jon came to give him the nickname, _Dolorous Edd._ Jon never missed the late night live comedy show that aired on television every Saturday night and he particularly loved the skit that featured _Maudlin Maeve_. Evidently the gag was that Maeve could turn even the best news into something woeful and sad. While Edd didn’t personally see his resemblance to the character, Jon had insisted that Edd was just like Maeve. "I’m calling you _Dolorous Edd_ he had proclaimed one night at the _Black Crow_ and the name had stuck. Edd couldn’t be too angry about it since he knew that Jon only handed out special names to folks he truly liked.

 _Yes_ , Edd thought as he watched Jon slogging back through the rain with a cup in each hand, _I know the boss pretty well_. _And something is eatin’ hard at him._

Jon hadn’t been himself lately. Truth be told, Jon hadn’t been himself for the last six months or so, but whatever was bothering him — and Edd knew _something_ certainly was – it had clearly gotten worse over the past month. Jon’s emotional state had been the main topic of discussion just two nights before when all the guys had met for a pint at the _Black Crow_ before heading home. Tormund was there, along with Grenn and Pyp – all regulars. What made the night unique was the fact that Samwell Tarly also stopped by. Samwell was CFO of White Wolf Contracting and Jon’s very best friend. While first impressions would make you think that Sam and Jon had little in common, they had served in the Night’s Watch together and as a result of their shared experiences, they were closer than brothers. But Sam almost never hit the pub after work, preferring to head home to his wife, Gilly, and their two small boys. So the guys had been on alert when Sam showed up and started sharing his concerns.

 _Gilly and I have been worried about Jon for some time,_ Sam had whispered to the guys as they crowded into a booth in the back of the room. Sam reported that the Snows had stopped coming over for their regular dinner night with the Tarlys over a year ago. Sam thought Jon seemed removed from reality and even a bit desperate. _Gilly says she has never seen Jon look so sad before._ Edd had been about to crack a clever joke that maybe he should transfer his nickname to Tarly who could thenceforth be known as _"Sorry Sam",_ when the other man had dropped a bombshell. _And I’m 100 percent certain Jon has been sleeping at the office for the last month!_

Tormund was uncharacteristically silent while Grenn and Pyp both looked around the table with wide eyes. They were all thinking the same thing: the Jon Snow they knew would _never_ willingly spend an evening hour, much less a whole night, away from his wife! _Are ya’ sure, Sam? ,_ Tormund had finally managed. Sam nodded and proceeded in his methodical way to catalog all the evidence. Jon’s truck had been at the office very early _every_ morning for weeks. Acting on their suspicions, on the Saturday night past, Sam and Gilly had bundled the kids into the car at 3:00 o’clock in the morning, traveled to White Wolf, and found that Jon’s truck was parked in his spot outside the office! After that discovery Sam had looked in the bathroom off Jon’s office and it was obvious that Jon was showering there. He had clothes in the office closet – way more clothes than normal. Finally Sam reported that he had seen Jon stocking the fridge with milk and other essentials. The men all looked at each other.

It was clear that Jon and Sansa were living apart. A heated discussion ensued as to why this had happened, with the general consensus being that Sansa had tossed Jon out and probably for good reason. As Jon’s friends absorbed the news, they also came to the conclusion that one of them needed to speak to Jon. When no one volunteered, they settled the matter by drawing straws and Edd had won.... or lost depending on how you looked at it. At any rate, he had agreed to talk to Jon and try to find out what the fuck was goin’ on. When Edd learned that the boss wanted them both to go to Greywater for a personal look-see, he knew that the fates had handed him a perfect opportunity. It was a four hour drive each way. Surely he could steer the conversation to Jon’s domestic life on the way back home!

Edd looked over at his boss as he drove, one hand on the wheel, the other holding his coffee. Taking a sip of his own, he cleared his throat. "So, boss, the guys were kind of wonderin’ when you and Sansa were gonna have the main crew over for another get-together at your house?"

Jon kept his eyes on the road, but Edd could see that his question had made the younger man uncomfortable. "Don’t know, Edd. Sansa’s business is really takin’ off and she seems to get home later and later so..."

"Oh, I know how that goes, boss! I’ll tell the guys."

Uncomfortable minutes passed while Edd tried unsuccessfully to think of another way to begin a conversation. He was so intent on his own thoughts that he almost spilled the remains of his coffee when Jon suddenly spoke up.

"You’ve been married a while now, right Edd?"

Edd nodded. "14 years, will be 15 in May."

Jon gave him a brief sideways glance. "And have you and Alys ever had...well, I mean...have you ever had occasion to kinda, I don’t know, sorta...split up?"

Edd held his breath. _Was the boss about to spill the beans?_ "Well, we’ve sure had some disagreements over the years...mostly about things that seemed pretty silly after the fact. But yeah, I’ve spent a night or two on the couch and once even had to sleep on the back porch in the wintertime!" Edd’s forehead creased in thought. "Can’t even remember what we argued about that time, but when the wife found me, half frozen in the recliner the next morning, whoooeee, she sure did her best to warm me up! We never spent more than a night apart though. Alys always says she can’t sleep well without me in the bed with her." Edd chuckled to himself, but then sobered as he looked over at Jon’s solemn face.

"Boss, you and the missus having some trouble?"

Jon took a sip of his coffee and sighed. "It’s complicated, Edd."

"So complicated that you’ve taken to sleeping at the office?"

Jon snapped his head toward his passenger so sharply, the wheel following, that Edd feared they were going into a ditch. "Boss!" Jon recovered, tightening his grip on the wheel, and turning his eyes back to the wet roadway. Neither man spoke. When a sign appeared indicating a rest stop, Jon exited. Pulling into a parking spot away from other vehicles, Jon turned the ignition off and sat starting out the window, drumming his fingers absently on the wheel.

Like many of the guys who worked for Jon, Edd had served in the Watch. He was older than Jon so he had mustered out before Jon had joined and became a Ranger. But he had served the realm just like Jon and so he understood, better’n most, when a man needed time to work his thoughts into words. They sat in silence for a long while, listening to the heavy rain pattering down on the truck. Finally, Jon shifted in his seat.

"Edd, I’m afraid I have fucked up my marriage so bad that I won’t ever be able to make it right again."

Edd looked at the younger man and realized, suddenly, what they all should have seen weeks before. Jon Snow – their smart, educated, talented, good-looking leader, the guy who had it all together – had been unraveling at the seams, coming apart emotionally for the gods knew how long! Edd had seen a lot in his time, but he had never seen someone in so much turmoil.

Jon continued, his voice heavy with pain. "I accused Sansa of something that she didn’t do. I don’t know how to make that right."

Edd coughed. "Sayin’ _I’m sorry_ always worked for me."

Jon closed his eyes and rest his head back on the seat. "It isn’t that easy. I _am_ sorry for what I thought. But I am _not_ sorry for the way I feel."

Edd was confused but he felt he had to say something. "Boss, you can’t do anythin’ to make it better when you’re sleeping across town from Sansa. Marriage is a marathon, not a sprint. You can’t run the race if you aren’t even on the course."

Jon drummed his fingers on the wheel in agitation, voice rising with every statement. "What happens if Sansa doesn’t want me to come home? What happens if when I get home, I find that I really don’t want to be there anymore? What happens when we both realize that there’s just not enough left of our marriage to even fight for!?! Dammit!" Jon’s voice broke and he buried his head against the steering wheel. "I _want_ to go home. I know I _need_ to go home, but I’m scared."

Edd had never seen it happen before, but he was pretty sure that Jon was crying silently because of the way his shoulders were moving up and down. Edd brushed his hand over his own eyes finding them suspiciously wet. He reached out hesitantly, tentatively, almost as if he were trying to soothe a wild beast, until his hand finally settled on the younger man’s back.

"Boss, you are a lot of things, but you aren’t a coward. And you ain’t no quitter. Maybe you just need help sortin’ out your feelings." Jon’s body had stilled. "Now all of this emotional stuff is way beyond my pay grade, but Alys works with someone who swears by this Dr. Seaworth. He’s a licensed counselor. Her friend says he saved her marriage. Real down to earth too, she says."

"I don’t like talkin’ about things, Edd. Especially not my feelings. Not to anyone," came the muffled response.

Edd smiled to himself. "I know that, Boss. But you didn’t build the business you have today by just stickin’ to the same old thing. Maybe you should treat your marriage like you treat _White Wolf_ and think outside of the box."

Jon sat back and gave a deep sigh. He glanced at his watch and then started the truck. "Look at the time. I’ll be paying your sorry ass triple OT if I don’t get you back home in the next hour."

The remainder of the trip home was filled with music from Sirius radio. Jon found a station that they both could agree on, and the two men let the noise fill the silence between them.

It was dark when they pulled in front of the main office for White Wolf. _Dark when we left, even darker when we get back_ , Edd thought.

Edd opened the door and made to step out, but a quiet voice stopped him. "Thanks for the advice Edd. I’ll think about it. I promise."

Edd slid out of the tall cab and turned back inside when his feet hit the ground. Clapping both hands on the seat he had just vacated, Edd leaned back inside the truck and looked directly at the man who was his boss but also his good friend. "That would make all of us around here really happy if you would _._ " He grabbed his jacket and made to close the door. "In the meantime, I’m goin’ home, Boss. I’d suggest you do the same."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter didn't move the Jon & Sansa dynamic much further, but I wanted an opportunity to show exactly what Jon has built with his business and to meet some of the guys who work with him (they are a familiar crew!). I also wanted some third party perspective on Jon and what he is going through. Next chapter: Jon goes to see Dr. Seaworth for the first time; Sansa cooks dinner for a friend who stops by to help her and a surprise "visitor" shows up at the same time?!? More angst ensues, but I promise Jonsa is the end game.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope Jon doesn't seem like too much of a jerk in this chapter. He has completely lost his self-esteem, realizing that the one thing his wife wants more than anything is beyond his ability to give her. He has certainly become bitter and turned to drink to block out his disappointment, but perhaps things aren't as bleak as they seem. Sansa's POV will be featured in the next chapter.


End file.
